Today, at least where I live, was a day to honor mothers. My mother and my husband’s mother have left the planet, as Gary says. Our fathers too, both of lung cancer, both Camels smokers, both veterans. His father died on Mother’s Day 1979.
I want to say something about mothering, because whoever birthed the people we care about, many of us mother. And father, too, is a verb with a broad implications. My mother used to say, “Think how the other person must feel.” She said this when someone was impatient or lost, more often when I was myself impatient or lost. She must have said that to me a hundred times.
Thinking about someone else’s needs is what people do when they mother and father, that’s what makes us good. It is what we mean by decent, or what I mean by that praise.
Think how the other person feels.
I took Mom’s comment literally, and that is why I try so hard to get inside the heads of my characters. I recognize that other people have their own needs and priorities. I recognize that most people do not think the way I do, reason the way I do, or set goals the way I do. I honor the differences, and I hope this comes through in my writing and in my day-to-day interactions with others. And even though I have failed at times, failed spectacularly, I return to that exhortation to think how the other person feels. Be who you are.
All this started with a homework assignment to “describe success.” As an American, there is having enough money to live, to be able to live and eat and shelter in comfort. I’ll set aside wealth since that hasn’t been part of my personal definition of success since I became a mother. I want neighbors who know my name and would notice if I failed to go for my morning walk. Being able to move on my own two feet counts as success at my age, so I’ll count that. Right now I’ve fallen deeply into writing and experiencing an epiphany like I did before reordering my chapters—that was a successful instant. I might like to win a prize (please), have a reading at Powell’s City of Books (the one this evening was wonderful), start another book? Yes, please to that, too.
What does success look, smell, taste, sound, and feel like? Moving right along, salty-sweet, the morning bird chorus, comforting, breathless, anticipatory. Making. Creating. Teaching. Parenting.
Because being a parent is the most important job I have ever had, I want to write here today about mothering. My children, our sons, have made us proud. Both of them are smart, and I am reminded again and again how creative, intelligent, and talented they are. They are also kind and generous with their parents. One calls us on the phone most days, asking what we’re doing, how we are, and sharing news of our grandchild. The other always shows up when we need him, to move furniture and give advice. There is some unofficial division of labor going on here that allows the two of them to do right by their parents. They are kind men, good men. Deep down loving and generous and honorable.
I feel pretty good about that as a mother.
We don’t always get what we want, and we don’t usually get all that we think we want or need, but since we try as best we can, sometimes we get the goods anyway.
A shout out to my children and their families.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 
You are well blessed. As I.
Perhaps the saddest situation, that I hear about far too often, is when parents and adult children or siblings become estranged and cease any contact other than some third party bile that may that finds an unwanted ear, or text or some other manifestation of the digital homestead in anti-social media.
My own mother passed at 74 over three decades ago. She suffered from a horrific cancer. I was on one coast and she on the other. Over the nine months from her diagnosis to her passing, I made six trips across country at time when we had three young children and demanding jobs.
Born in Appalachia and growing up on a tobacco farm, my mother knew full well the depths of financial sacrifice of the Great Depression. Her senior year in high school, the plummet in agricultural prices led to the tobacco crop not generating enough income to cover the transportation to market, much less the cash for necessities beyond what they could raise on the farm.
She and my father married during World War II and they raised four sons. She returned to the workforce in the early 60’s becoming a Cold Warrior in a lauded career as an editor in the Central Intelligence Agency with a top secret clearance; providing daily input to the White House briefing. She didn’t talk much about her work; considering security sacrosanct. I remember her once saying that she was banned from taking flight to Florida (something that would have never happened anyway) due to the frequency of jets being hijacked to Cuba. Only many years later did I come to learn than a CIA agent would knock on doors around the neighborhood once a year to inquire “how things were going at our household.”
In day in the autumn preceding her death, I planted some daffodil bulbs in the belief and hope that they would bloom before she passed. And they did. Just before I left on what would be my final time with her, I cut a half-dozen daffodils ready to open. We put them in a vase on the kitchen table where we took our meals. In the throes of the woozy and unrelenting morphine patch she mentioned the spring flowers several times. Her eyes trying to remain alert amid a slight slurring of her words. An unkind and unknown visage, she abstained alcohol and most prescription medicine, heretofore unseen but nonetheless foreboding.
When my twin brother and I were nine or ten during our weekly visit to GC Murphy five and dime a few blocks from our home, we used some of our paper route tip money to buy her a small bouquet of flowers knowing it would please her. A few minutes after we were home, she came in through the front door like her usual whirlwind dismayed at the thrown down jackets and other elements of household disarray we regularly inflicted and in no uncertain terms began telling us what to do. In the midst of her bluster, one of us courageously stepped forth offering up the bouquet of flowers which suddenly ended the outburst. She pulled us both close to her as her tone softened thanking us for the flowers. I remember the scratchy wool and coldness of the large buttons of her winter coat and being held close in her love that was for all time.
As the time for me to leave was near, we sat alone in a the pine paneled den. She on a love seat where they could watch TV. It was tuned to the Weather Channel with the volume muted. I knelt before her and placed my head in her lap telling her that I loved her amid grown man tears that I could not hold back. When I lifted my head, she said with focus and clarity “I believe in the afterlife and I know I will see you again.”
A couple of hours later I was a flight to Seattle. Later that day mother laid down in her bed never to rise again. I can only hope it was into the arms of the Lord she prayed to, one I was not fully sure about given her suffering before passing. If anyone was worthy of heaven it was her.
I think often of those final moments with her in the many years hence. I am close to her age at passing now. Many times I ponder on telling her about the many events; particularly news about her seven grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren that I know would please her.
In the tragedy of estrangement and broken bonds between family members, I think of the long, long time that one must live without a parent or sibling or friend. Left behind with a cold and hollow husk. It is never too late to make amends. Life will be better for it.
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Dear Arch Cape Scribe,
Thank you for this generous outpouring of wisdom and affection for your family. You have shared a beautiful story and offer a clear reminder to us all to cherish our family while we can.
My brother stopped speaking to me in 2005. I have tried hard and many times to reconcile, and my husband has tried. He will not speak to me. He is physically and mentally unwell, but his wife has remained by his side and I am grateful knowing that.
I am deeply grateful for my husband, our sons, their wives, and three grandchildren. Well blessed, indeed.
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so I suppose its hard to leave a comment about the type of pain ya never get over but pray to get through-ouch! the arch cape scribe’s eloquent and much appreciated response conveyed a great deal about the club most join when our parents fly away–kiitos usually I try to find something that occurs as we greave that perhaps not only puts a smile on our face at the same time we hold back the tears or not. for instance, my wife’s mom died in a local hospital on a Sunday morning–we went and as we entered the room where she laid on the bed -a hospital worker was bringing her in breakfast which I indicated to her that she probably would need seeing that she was dead–hmm yeah so I said it was ok cause I needed that at that time–probably will go to hell for that—when my mom died they put the wrong date on the headstone–I went and complained being a little upset at the time and the guys incharge just said so? mom would have probably thought that was funny seeing that she got another day out of it in the hospital suffering and all. we’ll have to wait until later to find out I suppose. which slowly brings me to my comment regarding mothers day– only Shaft’s mother understood him so everyday should be a Mother’s Day–respect and love thats what I’m talking about
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You put that “laid” in there on purpose to make me scream.
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